|
Guy - Your comments got me thinking about how custom "safari rifles" were built 30 years ago so I asked my gunsmith about your experience. He stated it was unusual to bed the actions back then. They actually had craftsmen who could inlet a stock so that the action didn't need bedding and a properly fitted stock would last longer than the bedding compounds available at the time. Does your stock have a cross bolt behind the recoil lug? That would have been the preferred custom touch at the time. And yes - heavy recoil will eventually crush the wood fibers and loosen the stock fit. Thing is - bedding breaks down too. Depending on the bedding compound your gunsmith is using, and how much you shoot it, you should be prepared to get the bedding redone seasonally.
Side note - and far less expensive for diagnostic purposes - have you gotten the bore scoped? It's not at all unusual for magnums to have a sharp drop-off in accuracy once the barrel starts showing wear. It sounds like you've already checked everything else.
__________________
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (42B.C)
|